Saturday, August 06, 2011

The AL MVP award is shaping up as a Boston-New York battle, with Adrian Gonzalez, Jacoby Ellsbury, and, if his August and September rival his July, Dustin Pedroia all legit candidates, and Granderson very much in the hunt.

People who favor pitchers are also throwing in the name of CC Sabathia, who will take the mound this afternoon with a 13-2 record in his last 15 decisions, not to mention having surrendered just seven earned runs in his last 62 2/3 innings. Along those lines, you can bet Tiger boosters are putting forth the candidacy of Justin Verlander. But that’s not going to happen. The 2011 AL MVP was at Fenway Park last night.

...He shrugs all this off as simply being a product of his environment - i.e. Yankee batting order, including all the aforementioned, plus the ever-dangerous Robinson Cano and the speedy Brett Gardner. That’s nice and noble of him to say, but any man with 49 percent of his hits (55 of 113) going for extra bases is no accident of a lineup. He’s a tremendous hitter.

...That’s his story, and he’s sticking to it, but consider one more stat, this one resurrected from the Old Math of baseball. Twenty-five years ago, before any of us heard of OBP, OPS, and Adjusted This and Adjusted That, good old-fashioned Runs Produced was all the rage. You added someone’s RBI total to his runs, then subtracted homers. This gave you an idea of true offensive worth to the team, or so we thought. With 155 runs produced going into last night, Curtis Granderson was leading the league.

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Granderson is having a career year, but let's not forget that over the two previous years he hit an aggregate .248. I'd never knock Granderson; he's going out there and getting it done this year, and he had some good years in Detroit. But it's safer to say "he's putting it all together this year" than to suddenly impute tremendousness to him. He's basically Dwayne Murphy – a very valuable player overall who would improve any team – but I'd reserve "tremendous hitter" for a tier or two above that.

Does that penalize someone for hitting a home run? A home run means that you score a run, so it counts home runs, it just subtracts them so it doesn't double count them by also including the RBI when a player drives himself in.

A home run means that you score a run, so it counts home runs, it just subtracts them so it doesn't double count them by also including the RBI when a player drives himself in.

Every other run gets counted twice, so yes, it penalizes a player for doing both parts of the job of producing a run. It would be a lot more logical to just add runs scored to RBI and divide by two, so it would be on the same scale as team runs. And yes, it's a stupid stat, but there's no need to make it even stupider than it inherently is by defining it in a stupidly biased way.

[EDIT: "producing a run" probably should be in quotes above; consider: BB, 2B, SF... guy who did the biggest part of the job of producing that run gets no credit for it.]

I think Bob Ryan is forgetting about a certain dude in Toronto.

Articles like this could actually help Bautista by splitting the "East Coast Bias" vote.

I think the commissioner should investigate this new PED that Granderson is taking that suddenly allows him to hit left-handers

"Up until this year I always used to shut my right eye at the plate. I taught myself that as a concentration and focus technique when I was six. Kevin showed me that most hitters don't necessarily do that, and he's right, I think I'm hitting better than ever with this new approach. Kevin is really good with picking out what hitters do with our eyes, since he got hit in the eye with a sledgehammer back when he was playing."

Up until this year I always used to shut my right eye at the plate. I taught myself that as a concentration and focus technique when I was six. Kevin showed me that most hitters don't necessarily do that, and he's right, I think I'm hitting better than ever with this new approach.

there was Twin in the 70s (can't remember who) who claimed he added 20 points to his average by adopting a more open batting stance that allowed him to see around his nose

I can see why it would drive Repoz nuts to admit that Long is a gifted coach, because it betrays his deeply-held cynicism that all praise of that sort is fanboyism and that basically, everything relating to NY sports is media puffery and horseshit.

People who favor pitchers are also throwing in the name of CC Sabathia, who will take the mound this afternoon with a 13-2 record in his last 15 decisions, not to mention having surrendered just seven earned runs in his last 62 2/3 innings. Along those lines,...

Along those lines, what's the word on what Sabathia's going to get from the Yankees after he opts out? With their rotation, is 6/170 all that unlikely?

there was Twin in the 70s (can't remember who) who claimed he added 20 points to his average by adopting a more open batting stance that allowed him to see around his nose